Contagion Of Fear
by Warriorsong
Summary: REVERSIONED. Mulder and Scully are called to the Brinkfield Institute to investigate a seemingly implausible murder, with a killer as varied as its victims.


**Contagion Of Fear**

R E V E R S I O N E D

An X-Files Fan Fiction

By Nicholas Clark (Warriorsong)

-------

Howard walked slowly down the harshly illuminated corridors, his thick-soled shoes making a staccato tap-tap against the black and white checkerboard pattern of the linoleum. The overhead lights bounced off his bald pate, his sparse brown hair greasy with sweat and brillcream. He stuck his thumbs behind his belt buckled, repositioning the leather strap and his pants lower over his generous middle. The khaki brown of his uniform was stained with sweat, its coarse fibres serviceable yet uncomfortable.

Howard's round nose wrinkled slightly as he passed one of the cell-like rooms that dotted his journey through the hospital. One of the patients had obviously had a mishap. It saddened Howard, this place and its sorry residents. He had been here for nearly fifteen years, unable to become a nurse or a counsellor, he had settled for helping in any capacity he could. As night warden he heard the nocturnal screams and cries of the inmates. Tortured souls all.

He stopped. The sound he believed he had heard continued a heartbeat more than halted.

His sweat became thinner, fear diluting it. The echoed footsteps had haunted him since the night six years ago when he had been sliced across the belly. His large hand moved from the belt loops on his pants where it had rested to trace the scar, a ridge beneath the rough fabric of his shirt.

His assailant had been an inmate, a man with no name who had screamed about the people watching him from the shadows. When Howard, the first there, had attempted to subdue him, the man had attacked him with a glass shiv, almost disembowelling him before plunging the weapon into his own eye, a quick and final stab.

Howard had maintained that the poor man had done so, so that he would not see his spectral tormentors, even in death.

Not blaming the man, Howard nonetheless still felt the clutch of fear at alien sounds in the night.

He stood outside the patient's room, uninhabited since the incident. Still, Brinkfield Institute had plenty of room, its government and private funding in short supply.

The lights flickered. Howard turned and stumbled back. His pulse raced as he scrambled to rationalize what he had just seen.

He could have sworn he saw a silhouette, backlit during the dark by the pale moonlight streaming in the window.

In the fluorescent light, no one was there. Plus the silhouette was pure fiction, a literary and cinematic personification.

Howard continued his slow walk; unconsciously loosening the stun baton that had became standard issue after his injury.

Turning the corner, the lights blinked again and again, the image of a masked man, balding and tied to a trestle was illuminated by the moonlight from the windows on either side.

The sweat crept down Howard's back, chilling him and instigating a shudder as the lights came back on.

The darkened figure was gone; it was simply a wide waiting room.

Howard's breath was ragged as he slowly began to walk. And it followed, the echo, some scant seconds later, a squeak, cheap rubber sneakers on lino.

Howard reached for his radio, ready to call his colleagues to ascertain where they were. His palm slick with sweat, fumbled with the walkie-talkie, it clattering to the ground, its plastic casing cracked.

As he bent to pick up the broken radio, the lights flicked out and he felt the all too familiar sting of a knife in his vitals.

Red blood oozed into the moonlight as Howard's life drained away onto the black and white tile, the sounds of knawing and the screams of the patients echoing in the night.

-------

Special Agent Fox Mulder stood looking down at the cooling corpse of Howard Banter, the victim's blood splattered across the linoleum and the white walls. Mulder's handsome face was set in a look of concentration beneath his rich brown hair.

His suit would have looked out of place amidst the khaki brown attire of the wardens and deputy's were it not for his partner, similarly attired, crouching over the body in the midst of a cursory examination.

Special Agent Dana Scully stood slowly, snapping off the latex surgical gloves and handing them bloodied to a deputy that held open an evidence bag. The deputy looked a peakish green.

Scully's red hair framed her face and waved as she turned to Mulder, indicated that they should step away.

Several steps down the corridor from the two wardens and the three deputies, Mulder turned to his partner.

"Well Scully?"

"The body has been ripped open with a savage but an almost surgical precision," Mulder nodded, that much was obvious, from both the wound and the surrounding, "and as far as I can tell, his liver is missing. The face is missing as we were already aware before arriving, the rough gouges near his neck showing the tool was somewhat serrated and made of glass."

Mulder raised an eyebrow at the last statement and Scully produced a small vial. She handed it to Mulder and he brought it up to his face, rattling it and peering intently at its contents. Sure enough, within the vial lay several slivers of bloody glass.

Mulder grimaced and handed the vial back to Scully as his cellular phone beeped at him, demanding attention.

"Mulder," he said, bringing the telephone to his ear and activating it.

"This is Skinner, any news on the case?"

Their boss, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, had sent them out to the isolated New Jersey hospital first thing that morning. Now two hours later, at seven a.m., he wanted validation.

Mulder, not interested in discussing the gruesome details, passed the phone to Scully as she rolled her eyes. Nonetheless she took the proffered telephone.

Mulder turned from his partner and walked back to the collection of deputies and wardens. The body had a sheet draped over it, the thick white cotton turning an unwholesome sanguine pink.

Mulder looked at the two wardens and began to speak to the one who seemed less pale.

"Roger," he said glancing at the man's nametag, "would you be able to show me to your file room?"

The man nodded. Mulder found it uncanny how much the man resembled the character Bull from Night Court.

The large man beckoned Mulder follow and they walked off down the corridor, the deputies and the remaining warden bringing up the rear slowly.

One deputy remained, leaning against the wall, left to watch over the body. His eyes however roved, alighting anywhere except upon the damp red sheet.

Scully watched them go as her conversation with the Assistant Director was brought to a close. Her face was drawn; obviously something had been said she didn't want to hear.

Scully walked slowly to the deputy, a middle aged man with greying hair at the temples. The effect was like that of a frosting, a layer of powder snow on his otherwise dark brown hair. As she approached, he straightened up and stood more attentively.

"Excuse me," Scully said, "but have there ever been any other attacks similar to this one?" Her eyes darted to the body at her feet, then back to the deputy.

"Can't rightly say ma'am, they keeps pretty much to themselves up here, although Howard here was attacked some six years back."

"Thank you deputy," said Scully before moving off in the direction she had seen Mulder walk off in.

-------

Mulder stood before a bank of filing cabinets, his suit jacket across the back of a nearby chair and his shirt sleeves rolled up.

His finger flicked through the files. Most were records of admissions and employee records. Patient data was confidential and only the administrator and senior staff had access.

Hearing the click of high heels, Mulder jumped into conversation mode.

"Scully, it says here that our victim was involved in at attempted evisceration. The patient responsible, a John Doe, then stabbed himself in the face, puncturing his eye and frontal cortex. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage seconds later. Mr. Banter was back at work six months later."

"So you think John Doe's ghost came back to finish the job?" Mulder grinned at the trademark cynicism that infused Scully's voice.

"No, that wouldn't explain the missing liver and facial injuries. Besides by all accounts Howard Banter was a model warden."

"That said Mulder, documents can be falsified."

"True but I talked to his colleagues on the way here and they all say his character was beyond reproach. So do the deputy's that knew him.

"So what do you suggest we do now?"

"The administrator wants to see us."

Mulder grabbed his jacket and made for the door. Scully hadn't moved. Mulder looked questioningly at her.

"Before we go, AD Skinner told me something you might want to know. Do you remember Deputy Wexell?"

"Yes," Mulder replied scratching his chin.

"He's dead. They found his body this morning. He died of an anaphylactic shock. His body was covered with insect bites similar to that of a mosquito sting."

"Or a wasp" muttered Mulder.

-------

Disclaimers

-------

The X-Files is copyright Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions and Twentieth Century Fox Television. The character of Hannibal Lector is also copyright.

If any of this information is wrong, my most humble apologies. No copyright infringement is intended, this is merely a work of fan fiction. I am in no way affiliated to any of these companies and people and what not. Thanks for reading.

Written (finished) 15th January 2001. Compiled 21st January 2001. Reversioned 3rd Jan 2008. Don't know if I'll ever finish this one, never planned more than this first bit. Loved the whole personification of fear episode, and this came to me. Sadly nothing else to continue it did. Think this one might be dead in the water. Updated 9th January. Yeah it's dead. But really does it need continuation? Fear doesn't die, fear is primal. Fear is always with us, in the darkness beyond the campfires, in our own hearts.

Found an old note that had some story notes for both parts:

"Sheriff Wexell survived. The fear entity returns. Manifests the victim's greatest fear and uses it to kill, Hanza Virus, Freddy Krueger, Werewolf, Waspman. Spin OCD angle in this story, germs swallowing man whole, in fact make it a mental hospital."

"Attacks Mulder and Scully, Scully fear of having cancer recur, mirror old and wrinkled, Mulder fears he was right all along." Guess the truth was out there…


End file.
